SusieJ's Advent Calendar December 12, 2012

Richard Scarry's Best Christmas Book Ever

Then Santa thanks him for all his help, and Lowly hops into his applecopter and flies safely home.

Richard Scarry wrote many "... Best Ever" books. In this case, he was not overly exaggerating.

[Close up of evergreens, January 2011]Scarry wrote a collection of his usual charming and simple short stories staring Huckle Cat, Lowly Worm, Penny and Pickles Pig, and Mr. Frumble, the world's best example of groundless positive thinking.

Scarry's simplistic stories, sentence structure and water colors are what appeal to children. The illustrations have the perspective of most children's drawings, but are packed with details — customer's tripping and falling, Mr. Frumble walking through town, mice peeking out of hiding places. The characters have curiously blank faces, so any emotion is a displayed by the full body, with buckets of tears being cried, and cats jumping a two feet off the ground in surprise.

The stories have a straightfoward plot and simple moral. Huckle, Sally and Big Hilda have a mysterious errand. Look! They have decorated the Christmas treen in the town square! Lowly and Big Hilda both need to help Santa. Mr. Frumble tries to help at Christmas but causes enough trouble that Mother Cat invites the fire department to stay for dinner. Mr. Gronkle learns to like children, and we all learn that a lader laid flat on thin ice can distribute weight to make rescues safer. Penny and Pickles get the best present, a new baby brother. They are brief and varied enough to lessen the pain of reading the book every night in December.

What truly makes this the best Christmas book ever is that Scarry included a craft and a game, and music and lyrics for two of the most popular Christmas carols, "Jingle Bells" and "Silent Night." My son still wants to make the clove-studded apple pomander. The book ends with two pages of "Christmas Words," a scene of winter fun with all the objects labelled. These illustrated catalogues are very popular with pre-readers.

The Best Christma Book Ever! has just enough of everything to deserve its title.